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Poverty strains cognitive abilities, opening door for bad decision-making, new study finds. As part of the study, researchers conducted experiments on two groups of subjects: low- and middle-income shoppers in a mall in New Jersey, and sugar cane farmers in rural India.

In the mall experiment, shoppers underwent a battery of tests to measure IQ and impulse control. However, half the participants were first given a “teaser” question — what they would do if their car had broken down and needed $1,500 worth of repairs — designed to put a pressing financial concerns at the forefront of their thoughts. In India, researchers tested the cognitive capacity and decision-making of farmers before the sugar cane harvest, when they were most strapped for money, and afterwards, when they had fewer financial woes. The results showed that people wrestling with the mental strain of poverty suffered a drop of as much as 13 points in their IQ — roughly the same found in people subjected to a night with no sleep.

Better Humans? Understanding the Enhancement Project, by Michael Hauskeller. Andy Miah on the pros and cons of humanity 2.0 If you could enhance one aspect of your biology, what would it be?

Would you use cosmetic surgery to make yourself more beautiful? How about cognitive enhancers to improve your memory or wit? What if you and your partner could take love pills to iron out any problems in your relationship? What if you just want to live a longer and healthier life? These questions are discussed in Michael Hauskeller’s new book, a philosophical exploration of the arguments surrounding human enhancement.
First-ever human head transplant is now possible, says neuroscientist - Quartz. Promotional posters for the new Everest movie recently appeared in New York City subway stations, and these days I travel to and from work with a strange lump in my throat.

Everest, which opens in wide release in the US today (Sept. 25), is based on the true story of how eight people died in a storm on the world’s tallest mountain in 1996. It’s the same story that Jon Krakauer told in his bestselling book Into Thin Air. It was, until last year, the most deadly accident in Mount Everest’s history. Then on April 18, 2014, an ice release killed 16 climbers on the mountain. And barely a year later, April 25, 2015 became the new deadliest day in Everest history, when a magnitude 7.8 earthquake killed nearly 9,000 people in Nepal, 21 of them in an avalanche at Everest Base Camp.
A Real-Life Tricorder Is Now Available For You To Buy And Scan Yourself. Get excited, Star Trek fans and self-tracking enthusiasts: your real-life tricorder is now available for pre-order.

Scanadu , a startup based at the NASA Ames Research Center, has been working on a non-invasive tricorder for over two years. By the end of 2012, the company had a prototype ready--a handheld Yves Behar-designed device that tracks pulse transit time (to measure blood pressure), temperature, ECG, oximetry, heart rate, and breathing rate. A 10 second scan of a person’s temple yields data that has a 99% accuracy rate. That information is automatically sent via Bluetooth to the user’s smartphone. Today, the Scanadu Scout tricorder is available for pre-order on Indiegogo .
Investing in the Future of Regenerative Medicine. Spray-on skin.

Lab-grown ears. Human tissue grown in a petri dish. We’re going deep into sci-fi territory (and it is already happening). Regenerative medicine is an emerging field that provides treatments to repair, regenerate, or replace damaged cells and tissue.
Microbes: The Trillions of Creatures Governing Your Health. From India, app checks urine to detect presence of diseases. Gain instant and exclusive access to over 5,000 of the most creative ideas, innovations and startups on our database and use our smart filters to take you direct to those that are most relevant to your industry and your needs.

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To Seriously Improve Global Health, Reinvent the Toilet. The toilet is a magnificent thing. Invented at the turn of the 19th century, the flush version has vastly improved human life. The toilet has been credited with adding a decade to our longevity. The sanitation system to which it is attached was voted the greatest medical advance in 150 years by readers of the British Medical Journal.

Unfortunately it is an impractical luxury for about two- thirds of the world’s 7 billion people because it relies on connections to water and sewerage systems that must be built and maintained at great expense. About 40 percent of all people, an estimated 2.6 billion of them, have no access to even a minimally sanitary facility, according to the World Health Organization. The result is illness and early death.

Vaccines and medicines against these diseases help. Doing so requires reimagining the toilet. For gridless sanitation to be economical, commerce needs to flourish around the collection and treatment of excrement.